


That Rack of His

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Camping, M/M, Mild Language, Minor Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Slow Build, Spooky, cryptid Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26846455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It's just your typical camping trip. Hiking. Animal watching. Bonfires. Ghost Stories. Dire warnings. Mysterious noises. Occult sigils. Unidentifiable creatures in the dark. Okay, maybe it isn't quite typical. The record should reflect that Peter was never in favor of the camping.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Anonymous





	That Rack of His

The record should reflect, for accuracy’s sake, that Peter was never in favor of the camping.

It was a bad idea, and he had told Ned it was a bad idea on numerous occasions. They lived in one of the greatest cities in the world. Every amenity and entertainment at their feet. What did they need to go to the boonies for? But Ned had just given him puppy dog eyes and talked about how he and his dad would spend weekends in Vermont fishing and hiking and bonding over … The joys of sleeping outside in the cold? The details were a little fuzzy in Peter’s mind, but the eyes? The eyes were very clear. Also the lip with just a hint of wobble to it, because Ned’s dad had left when he was ten, and now he had no one to go camping with.

Peter couldn’t exactly tell him no without being the world’s biggest jerk. Besides, at least it was something to do during fall break that would force him away from patrolling and mainlining old episodes of The Good Place. The monotony of that routine was, admittedly, getting to him.

Peter had envisioned a weekend, maybe a long weekend even, spent at a ritzy Montauk campground with a game room, and bathrooms, and a charming farmer’s market within biking distance. Huckleberry jam. That sort of shit. And that’s what he would have insisted on, if only Clint hadn’t heard them discussing it.

Clint owned the apartment building in Bed-Stuy where Peter and Ned lived, and he was the most unlikely landlord Peter had ever encountered. He possessed both an inability to fix anything that went wrong in the building, and a confounding laissez-faire attitude about collecting rent. When they were still very new to the building, a few days after the first of the month, he had actually stopped by the apartment to ask Peter if he could borrow twenty bucks for pizza. 

“I mean,” Peter had said, confused. “Do you maybe just want the rent, man?”

His old landlord had been knocking on his door the very second the clock ticked over to the first, and he’d been confused when the same thing didn’t happen here.

Clint’s eyes had lit up like it was Christmas, though when he looked inside the envelope that Peter had set aside with the rent money, he had balked and given all but twenty of it back, walking away when Peter protested.

“Forget it, Pete!” he’d called from down the hall. “I just wanted enough for a pie.”

Now Peter slips the rent envelope under Clint’s door in the early hours of the morning. He knows that he and Ned are much more capable of paying than some of the families in the building, and eventually they’re going to need new pipes. The plumbing here is shit.

Despite his oddities, Clint’s become a friend. He always down to split a pizza or come along to make a fourth for bowling, and he joins them for movie night every other week, bringing along his dog, Lucky, and sometimes Kate. His, what? Girlfriend? Nemesis? Caretaker? It’s unclear.

It was during a movie night that he first heard them discuss the camping trip. Not discuss, really. Fight. They’d been having a fight about where to go for their trip, with Ned insisting on somewhere deep in Vermont, and Peter countering that Long Island was _right there._ You could get there on the bus. Anywhere you could go on the bus seemed a little less intimidating to Peter. If they went with Ned’s plan, they’d have to rent a car.

“You guys are going camping?” Clint had interrupted their whisper argument loudly and enthusiastically.

“No,” Kate had interjected warningly, but been ignored.

“I love camping,” Clint continued. “Camping is my favorite.”

He didn’t straight-up ask to be invited, but he did give them his own version of puppy dog eyes – bluer and more golden retriever-like than Ned’s – and Peter figured misery loves company anyway. Besides, he said he could borrow camping supplies from work so they wouldn’t have to buy anything new.

It was great, except it left Peter wondering where exactly Clint worked when he wasn’t being their landlord. His absences from the building didn’t seem to coincide with any regular 9 to 5 so much as pure whim. Was it a really lenient camping store? _Whatever_.

After that, Ned and Clint planned the camping trip, and Peter threw up his hands and gave in. This was a thing that was happening to him. It might not be pleasant, but he could deal. In the meantime, he had petty criminals to take down, and directions to give to little old ladies who don’t understand why they have to keep _changing things in this city._

The result of which is that, on the morning in late October when their trip is supposed to start, he’s standing on the stoop outside their building with Ned, bags at their feet, completely unaware of where they are going, or for how long, or how they are getting there.

He’s about to ask Ned if he should call a Lyft or something, when a creepy white van rolls up to the curb and MJ sticks her head out of the passenger-side window.

“Get in losers,” she says, tipping her sunglasses down her nose. “We’re going camping.”

The door of the van slides open, and there’s Kate grinning at them.

“C’mon guys,” she says. “We can put your stuff in the back.”

Peter hadn’t exactly realized so many people were coming along on this trip.

“Um,” he says, but obediently carries his backpack to the back of the van. Kate’s flipped open the double doors and is rearranging luggage. Peter can’t identify half the stuff that’s back there, but it looks like they’re preparing for a small siege instead of fall break.

Kate shifts things until she gets to a large metal boxy thing at the bottom of the other luggage.

“Phil, can I move your briefcase?” she shouts.

“Very carefully,” a voice from the front of the van calls out.

“Wait,” Peter says. “Who’s Phil?”

“You don’t know Phil?” Ned asks, as though he’s done something deeply uncool.

“How am I supposed to know Phil?” Peter counters.

“I’m Phil.”

A guy with a receding hairline and a bland smile sticks his head around one of the open van doors and waves at Peter. He’s got to be at least 40, and he’s wearing dark pants and a button up under a black windbreaker with about a million pockets. Is he Kate’s dad?

“Nice to meet you Mr. Parker,” he says, extending his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Peter shakes his hand.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. “And who have you heard about me from, exactly?”

He doesn’t get an answer because the building door behind them slams open, Lucky barks and races down the stairs, and Clint runs after him shouting “Babe!”

Clint bounds up to them with several bags hanging from his shoulders and a giant smile on his face.

“You’re early!” he says, handing his luggage off to Kate.

He then proceeds to wrap an arm around Phil’s waist and lean in for a kiss.

“I’m exactly on time,” Phil says with a smile as they break apart.

“That’s what I said,” Clint replies.

Well, Peter thinks, so much for his theory that Clint and Kate might be dating. Never really made that much sense anyway. Though this? This is not less confusing.

Clint, looking enamored in a way that Peter has never seen him, manages to drag his eyes away from Phil and realizes that Peter is staring. He’s being rude. He knows he’s being rude. He’s just a little shocked. Not that Clint is dating a guy, but that Clint is dating _this guy_. Clint –

with his muscles, and his bumbling, and his inability to understand the concept of rent, God bless him – appears to be dating an actual adult.

“Pete,” Clint says, gracefully ignoring the rude staring. “I don’t think you’ve met Phil. My guy.”

“His partner,” Phil clarifies. “And we just met.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Peter,” Kate interrupts the introductions. “Where’s your sleeping bag?”

“I, um, don’t have one?” Peter says. “Is that, like, important?”

Everyone around him groans in unison, and Peter is chided back up to the apartment with instructions on how to make up a bedroll with his blanket and sheets. So sue him if he was never in the boy scouts. When he comes back, he throws the bedroll on top of everything else in the back of the van – it’s getting dangerously close to blocking the rear window – and gets into the van grumbling. Clint’s in the front seat with Phil and Ned, Kate and MJ are spread out in the second row, so Peter heads to the back seat, where Lucky thumps his tail at him and pants happily.

“If anyone else forgot something, now’s the time,” Phil says. “Otherwise, we’re leaving Brooklyn.”

“Bagels!” Clint says, in a slightly panicked tone. “I was supposed to get breakfast.”

“Box under your seat,” Phil says. “I thought you might forget.”

“You know me so well.”

The van rumbles to life, and they pull out into traffic.

“So,” Peter asks, selecting an everything bagel from the box passed back to him, and curious now that the prospect is more immediate. “Where are we headed?”

Turns out Ned and Clint have decided on a campground up in the Catskills, which isn’t exactly in Peter’s comfort zone. But it’s only a few hours away from the city, so he doesn’t feel too bad about it.

Well, it should be only a couple of hours, but Peter’s estimation failed to factor in bathroom breaks for Lucky, time spent gathering snacks and stretching their legs, or Clint’s unaccountable fascination with roadside attractions.

They stop for group pictures in front of a giant garden gnome and a weird rock formation, but eventually Phil has to draw the line.

“No,” he says. “We are not stopping at New York’s _second_ biggest ball of yarn. We have standards.”

“But baaabe…” Clint whines.

“This is for your own good.”

“Fine,” Clint says huffily. Then a few minutes later “Oooh. Pumpkin patch!”

They do stop at the pumpkin patch. Peter had rolled his eyes at the previous stops, but he has to admit as he hauls himself outside that it is fucking picturesque. The air smells like fallen leaves, kettle corn, and bubbling apple cider. There’s a big red barn at the center of it all, and off to one side is a patch with bight orange pumpkins and twisting vines that looks to stretch for miles.

Ned drags a reluctant MJ over toward the entrance of a giant corn maze while Clint makes a beeline for the towers of stacked pumpkins in an array of colors.

“We can have a carving competition!” he shouts gleefully. “And target practice! And pumpkin chunkin’!”

Phil follows behind him with an indulgent smile.

“Pumpkin … Chunkin’?” Peter says, raising an eyebrow at Kate.

“He’s from Iowa,” she says. “Apparently it’s a whole thing. He tried to explain it to me last Halloween, but I’m still a little fuzzy on the details.”

“So, snacks?” Peter says, tilting his head to a little area set up with food trucks and circles of hay bales for seating.

“Definitely snacks,” Kate agrees.

A radioactively jacked-up metabolism means Peter’s almost always hungry, but the options available are enough to sate even his appetite. After Frito pie, several pumpkin pasties, a bag of kettle corn, and an apple cider slushie, he barely has room for the pumpkin bomb that constitutes his dessert. He’s also feeling much more optimistic about this trip. It’s possible that existing on a diet of coffee and ramen noodles has been negatively affecting his attitude.

He joins Kate at a hay bale circle where she’s popping mini apple cider donuts into her mouth with a look of serene satisfaction.

“What is that?” she asks, eyeing the treat on a stick that he’s slowly making his way through.

Technically, it’s vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two pumpkin pie slices dipped in chocolate.

“I pretty sure it’s what happens when autumn and an ice cream bar make sweet, sweet love,” he says, holding the stick out to offer her a bite.

Kate waves him away and eats another donut.

“Keep your lewd sweets away from me, Parker.”

“Your loss,” he shrugs and keeps on eating, even though his stomach is now getting slightly uncomfortable.

It’s late enough in the year that the weather has turned chilly, but the sun overhead is so bright that it’s comfortable for him to slip off his flannel and soak in some extra vitamin D in just a t-shirt.

Peter closes his eyes and tilts his face up toward the warmth. He hears children squealing from the playground, a tractor rumbling in the distance, the susurrus of corn stalks moving in the breeze.

“We just don’t have room for all those,” he hears Phil’s voice, and opens his eyes to see that part of their group, at least, is returning.

Clint is pulling a large wagon behind him, stacked high with pumpkins ranging from the fairytale-esque green princess variety to oversized orange beasts larger than Peter’s head.

“We can stack them on the roof,” Clint says. “C’mon, Phil. I know you brought extra rope. You’re my favorite boy scout.”

He leans in to nuzzle at his boyfriend’s neck, and Peter watches as Phil’s lips twitch into a reluctant smile.

“Fine,” he says. “But if we end up with pumpkin puree all over I-87, that’s on you.”

“Yes!” Clint pumps his fist in the air. “Pete! I need your freaky gymnastic skills over here!”

So Peter licks the last of the chocolate from his fingers and climbs up on top of the van. He helps Clint secure his pumpkin haul with a makeshift rope net that he isn’t at all convinced will work. By the time they’re tying down the last rope, MJ and Ned have emerged from the corn maze and are picking their way back to the parking lot, bickering as they come.

“It doesn’t count as winning if you cut your way through the maze, _Michelle_ ,” Ned whines, walking a step behind MJ as she stalks toward the van.

“Well, if an activity doesn’t reward innovative thinking, then I don’t want to play.”

“Should you really have that knife, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Nedward, should you really have that face?”

Ned stops, pauses a moment, and then shakes his head.

“That doesn’t even make any sense!” he calls to her, jogging to catch up.

They all pile into the van and pull back onto the highway, and though Peter keeps an eye out the back, they don’t leave the line of pumpkin corpses he was expecting.

It’s late afternoon by the time they finally get the right exit, and the weather has taken a turn for overcast and ominous.

They pass through a small town with brightly-painted storefronts and stop at a gas station on the outskirts.

“Almost there, everybody,” Phil announces to the group as he pulls in and kills the engine. “Just need to fill up before we get too far into the mountains.”

There are whirling gray clouds overhead when they pile out of the van once more, and the temperature has dropped by at least 10 degrees. In the winter the town is a ski destination, and it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that they could get snow flurries.

Peter huddles in on himself trying to warm up as he makes for the convenience store to get a coffee. He endures mild teasing from MJ when he pours in a healthy tot of pumpkin spice creamer.

“Did you misplace your Ugg boots, Parker? Your infinity scarf?”

“Why do you hate joy?” he asks her, sprinkling extra cinnamon on top of his drink for emphasis. “Do I judge you for drinking coffee black and bitter like your soul?”

“You realize I take that as a compliment, right?” she says, raising one brow in a satisfied gesture.

“Dammit,” Peter says. “Of course you do.”

Maybe they’re being a bit too loud with the jibes and laughter, because Peter catches the eye of the man behind the service counter, and he’s giving them a look that could curdle milk. It sends a trickle of forewarning down his spine. Not the pressing kind that sends him ducking under a fist or a bullet. It’s subtler. Itchy.

He heads to the register anyway, though his feet want to cling to the floor.

“This all for you?” the man asks, an oily smile sticking in his dark beard.

Peter ducks his head and averts his eyes, staring at the brown stained countertop.

“This and the gas on pump 2,” he says.

The man cranes his neck around Peter to look outside.

“Wait!” Ned yells, and he and MJ rush up to the counter, each with a couple bags of marshmallows tucked in their arms.

“We have to make s’mores,” Ned says, breathlessly.

“Fine,” Peter laughs, piling the bags onto the counter. “These too.”

“You kids going camping?” the man at the register asks.

“Yeah,” Ned answers, brightly. “We’re on fall break.”

Peter thinks the man’s smile in response is a little condescending, but he says nothing.

“And whereabouts you headed? ‘Round Woodstock way?”

“Devil’s Tombstone, actually.”

The reply comes from Phil, who’s just entered the store, turning his jacket collar up to block the wind.

“I’m sorry, we’re going where, exactly?”

Peter’s not, like, a superstitious person, exactly, but he’s seen enough weird shit in his years as Spider-Man to not write off possibilities just because they seem initially unbelievable.

“It just comes from some old Dutch folktales,” Phil says with a smirk. “I’m pretty sure the Devil is at least a couple hundred years removed.”

“I think you might be misinformed there.”

They all turn almost in unison. When Phil speaks, his tone is something bothersome. A bright, active curiosity that Peter didn’t expect on this subject.

“You believe in the devil, Mr. …”

“Beck,” the gas station attendant says. “Quentin Beck. And I believe there’s something up Hunter Mountain way that’s been scaring the shit out of people. I’ve seen their faces as they head directly out of town back to where they came from. White, like they’ve seen something straight out of hell. And I’ve read about the people who’ve gone missing. Six this year. Three of them were staying at Devil’s Tombstone. Another was a day hiker. Two were from town even, and the Sheriff can’t find a trace.”

Peter feels a nudge at his fingertips, and Ned’s hand is there, gripping onto his. MJ wouldn’t dare, at least not in public, but she’s taken a step closer to her friends, arms crossed and an intractable expression on her face.

“That’s quite a tale,” Phil says, again without the scoff Peter expects. Instead, he steps closer. “Did anyone describe what they saw?”

Beck snorts.

“No,” he says. “They didn’t waste time answering questions. But the fear I saw on their faces told me everything I need to know. So my advice to you folks would be to go somewhere else. As fast as you can. Have a nice little camping trip somewhere the Devil definitely isn’t. That’s not here.”

“Well, thanks for the advice,” Phil says, cool and collected. “Do you have any hiking trail maps for the mountain? I meant to bring one with me, but I forgot.”

Beck sneers, but he doesn’t argue with Phil or say anything else.

Peter finishes paying for gas, and marshmallows, and the map that Beck angrily slams onto the counter in a tense silence. Then he takes his bags, hands the map to Phil, and they all turn together and leave.

They walk to the van as one, silent as though under a spell. Peter can feel the itch of Beck’s eyes on his back the whole way.

They join Kate, Clint and Lucky in the van, buckle their seatbelts, and sit for a beat of intense quiet. Then Phil tips his head back against his seat and starts to giggle. It feels like a bubble bursting. They all look at each other warily, but they can’t help but laugh, egging each other on until Peter’s jaw hurts from grinning, and Phil is wiping tears from his eyes. Clint joins in with a helpless chuckle, but Kate just eyes them all like they’ve gone crazy. Maybe they have.

“Can you believe that guy?” Phil asks, turning to look at them in the back seats. “How much you think the visitor’s bureau pays him to weave scary stories for the tourists?”

“Oh my God, Phil, you set him up perfectly,” Ned says enthusiastically. “’Do you believe in the devil?’ Classic. I felt like we were in a horror movie.”

“What about the devil?” Kate asks, giving Lucky a cuddle to try and stop him barking. He decided to join in with the noises everyone else was making, and hasn’t stopped.

So Phil recounts the story with interjections from Ned and MJ while he pulls out of the gas station and heads down the road. There’s no discussion of maybe going somewhere else to camp. The fear has been artfully diffused. But Peter can’t help but remember the way Quentin Beck had set his spidey senses tingling. That has to mean something, right?

It takes another half hour by winding back roads to get to the campground. The area really is lovely, wooded with trees still transitioning to fall colors at the foot of a high mountain. A little of the tightness Peter’s been letting build up in his chest breaks when he sees the actual “Devil’s Tombstone.” It’s just a big boulder with a metal historical sign screwed onto its surface. Nothing creepy here.

The ranger on duty, a guy about Peter’s age with mismatched socks and greasy hair under a khaki baseball cap, gives them a camping decal to hang at their site and another map of just the campground this time.

“Number 13,” he says. “Best site on the grounds. Also, just so’s you know, we’ve been having reports of, well, basically bears around camp lately, so be cautious.”

“Bears?” Clint says. “Shouldn’t they be hibernating by now?”

“Um, what does basically bears mean?” Peter asks at the same time.

Because that’s weird, right? Or maybe he’s just getting his anxiety about entering unfamiliar territory mixed up with the kind of vigilance that falls over him when on patrol, ear cocked to the wind for the slightest sound of trouble buried in the city din. Probably it’s just paranoia. Right?

The ranger shrugs, loose and careless.

“It was dark, so it’s hard for people to give descriptions,” the he says. “But they’ve gotta be bears. Or, I don’t know, really, really big, rabid raccoons.”

“That’s very comforting,” Peter deadpans.

“Hey, these things happen,” the ranger assures. “Part of being out in nature. If you see one, keep calm, move away slowly and quietly, and come get one of us here at the main building. We’ve got tranq guns in case they get aggressive, but we can usually lure them away from the area with food.”

“That is so cool,” Ned whispers. Then louder. “Can I see your gun?”

Peter and MJ both elbow him at the same time.

Peter can’t argue that site 13 is the best seat in the house. It’s a beautiful spot right on the little lake at the heart of the campground, closed in by mountains on all sides. The hillside is bright with a shock of yellow and red-leafed trees. When they reflect on the lake, it looks like the water is alight with fire.

It becomes clear, though, why they were able to secure such a great camping spot. They had absolutely no competition. The campground is abandoned. No tents or trailers in any of the other spots they pass. If Peter didn’t know better, he would assume the place was closed for the season. He’d expected it to be humming with leaf peepers and kids also on fall break, but there’s no one.

Ned is so psyched by everything that Peter can’t bear to bring him down, but he does share a wide-eyed look with MJ over his head when they scramble out to set up for the night. She shakes her head, obviously as bewildered as he is.

The sun is a glowing orange ball in the distance when they start making camp, so they try to work quickly. Peter climbs a few trees to string a tarp up over the tent site in case of rain while Clint and Ned assemble two tents beneath him. It’s one of those situations where Peter can see the true practical applications of a Lego obsession. There are about a million parts, and Ned clicks them all into place with no hesitation at all.

Further off, MJ and Kate are unloading all the bags and supplies while Phil builds up a fire in the stone fire ring.

“Katie-Kate, be careful with my bow,” Clint calls over when Kate hefts out a long purple bag. “Giselle is a very delicate girl.”

  
“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” Kate waves him off. “I know how to handle a bow. It goes directly in the fire, right?”

“Don’t you da—“

His protest is cut off by a noise that cuts sharply into Peter’s bones. It’s part human, part something else. A desperate scream for help.

Before he has any time to think about showing off any of his preternatural skills, Peter is down from the tree, crouching as he lands, and then standing and running full-tilt, twitching his head this way and that to try and discover the location of the cry despite the way it echoes off the hills around them. It comes again, and this time he’s certain, absolutely certain that someone is being murdered.

He’s at the edge of the lake, pausing to calibrate, when Clint’s hand wraps around his bicep, steadying.

“Pete, stop!” he yells, in a way that suggests he’s called out a few times but Peter hasn’t processed it. “It’s nothing. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

Peter rounds on him.

“It is not nothing,” he insists. “Someone’s in trouble. We have to do something.”

Clint has the audacity to laugh at him. He cuff’s Peter on the back of the head, holding the scruff of his neck in a gesture that reminds Peter vaguely of a mother cat with an unruly kitten.

“It’s just a mountain lion,” Clint says, trying to repress a grin. “Shit, you really are a city kid.”

“Mountain lion?” Peter repeats dumbly.

“Yeah,” Clint says, dropping his hands from Peter now that he doesn’t show immediate signs of running. “Look, don’t feel bad. Scared the shit out of me too the first time I heard one, too. Sounds like somebody screaming bloody murder, right?”

Peter nods silently.

“Right. That’s all it is. Barney, my big brother, used to tell me they sound like that to lure people in as prey, but I’m pretty sure he was just trying to scare me. They mostly eat deer.”

“Oh my god,” Peter says, breathlessly. His heart is still pounding quick in his chest, and he scrubs at his face. “I feel like an idiot.”

“At least your first instinct was to help,” Clint says. “Mine was to hide under my bed with a flashlight to scare off murderers. Not sure how that was really supposed to help, but I was five, so logic was not my strong suit.”

“You say like anything has changed,” Kate says with a snort. “C’mon and eat you two. Phil’s making cheeseburgers.”

Phil has set a grill over the roaring fire and is charring a line of hamburgers over the flame. Full dark falls swiftly once the sun slips down past the horizon, and they eat bacon cheeseburgers and potato chips by the light of the fire. Then they toast some marshmallows while Clint tells stories about his years working as a carney with a traveling circus. Peter assumes, and hopes, they are wildly fictionalized.

The food and lazy conversation help to calm him down. So does the way Ned and MJ flank him on either side, silently letting him know he isn’t the only one being vigilant.

He thinks all that is working until they retire to their tents for bed, and he finds himself suddenly wide awake. Usually a general lack of REM means that Peter can fall asleep within minutes at any given time. But it turns out that years of patrolling every night has programmed his body for wakefulness. He might be functionally nocturnal. That, in combination with his scare earlier, leaves Peter staring up at the grey canvas ceiling of the tent and willing himself to sleep. It doesn’t help.

Ned is the first to drop off, gentle snores filling the tent, but MJ and Kate aren’t far behind him. Peter can hear when their breathing shifts to something deep and regulated, can hear MJ muttering in her sleep. It seems like it’s in iambic pentameter from the rise and fall of her voice, so he assumes they’re working on something Shakespearean in her theater workshop this semester.

He lays like that for about an hour before he has to get out of there and move or something. His bedroll is at the back of the tent, so he steps over the others, moving lightly on his toes and slowly unzipping the tent door to let himself out.

Outside, the air is frigid, and the moon is high and full, casting long shadows from the trees. Peter spends a few minutes just pacing back and forth between the tent and the still-steaming fire pit, trying to workout his excess energy. Everything is so quiet here that it’s unnerving. 

Then he thinks fuck it. He’s not made for this environment, and what Ned doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He needs electric lights, and traffic noises, and people awake at unlikely hours. Something that doesn’t feel desolate, Martian, and cold.

It’s a stroke of luck that the keys are in the van. When he starts the engine and waits a couple minutes, no one emerges to check on him. He backs out of the campsite before turning on the headlights and heading back in the direction of the town. With any luck something will be open. Sure it’s a far cry from New York, but this point, he’ll settle for anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Spooky Season everybody! This is very silly and self-indulgent, but I need an outlet for all my excessive fall vibes. It will get more creature-centric in following chapters. 
> 
> Pumpkin Bombs used in tribute to Rainbow Rowell's intensely October-y "Pumpkinheads."
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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